Big Brother to the Twins

My sister A had her twins three months early. They arrived unexpectedly and very rapidly on Saturday. The larger of the two boys was 2 lbs 6 oz and the smaller was 1 lb 14.9 oz. They were immediately transported to one of the stellar Children's Hospitals we have here in the Twin Cities. A followed as soon as she was released from the hospital (the babies were both breach and delivered via C-section).

Our family visited the babies on Monday (at least I did - Tim stayed in the car and the girls stayed with Grandpa and K at the Ronald McDonald house).

A arrived on Tuesday. She called me that evening and asked if I would like to take K away from the hospital. He had been doing well since both sets of grandparents had taken turns caring for him but now they were gone and Mom and Dad were obviously distracted.

So on Tuesday, the girls and I drove down to the hospital and picked K up and took him to the Minneapolis Sculpture Gardens.

He has a little push bike (two-wheels - something new to me) that he zoomed all over the place on. When he wasn't on the bike, he was running.

One of the famous landmarks here in the Twin Cities - the giant cherry on the Spoon Bridge.

When we were in this sculpture room, K started running a loop inside the square of benches - he ran, and ran, and ran, and ran, and ran. My Mom says he will do that sometimes. He came up to me, dripping in sweat, and told me he was nice and cool now and started running again (it was a record breaking day - we smashed the old record high of something like 64 Fahrenheit by nearly ten degrees).

See K peeking?

I was a bit worried when we picked K up - he is very attached to his parents and I was afraid we were going to leave the hospital with a screaming child. However, he was as good as gold the entire time.

A told me last night that there is a service provided at the hospital to help older siblings adjust in situations like this. Yesterday, they were explaining to the social worker that Aunt Melissa had come with his cousins and took him to the park. K piped in saying "and I was very happy!" It did this aunt's heart good to hear that.

The Ronald McDonald house are kicking them out today. They plan to return home today, depending on when they leave the girls and I may go down to visit them. The twins will have to stay at the hospital until at least the beginning of June. Consequently, we may have house guests on and off over the next few months.

Below is a view from the parking garage at the hospital.